Review: Caroline Walker
Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
 |
Joy, 11am, Hackney, 2017
Caroline Walker |
The
woman in the dark floral dress stands at a basin and is removing her red glove.
The bright glow emitting from a gauzed, sunlit window floods the interior and
highlights the face of a woman at her toilette. A suggestion of red resides in
the filled sink; perhaps this is the first glove removed? We may start to
question why the gloves’ pair is in the sink; why it is soaking? Is the woman, who
is wearing matching red slippers, the property’s resident? Perhaps she is a visitor
or alternatively, the paid domestic help? The artist has not revealed figure’s
status. Why is this woman the focus for scrutiny? The painting’s title does not
reveal any further clues other than the figure’s name, the hour of the act and
the location. It is the job of the viewer to draw their conclusions and provide
a narrative dependent on their own personal perspectives.
The
notion of ‘home’ for refugee women living in temporary accommodation in
London is the latest thematic series in Caroline Walker’s investigative
paintings. On show at Kettle’s Yard Gallery, Cambridge is the
small but powerfully evocative oil painting entitled “Joy, 11am, Hackney”
(2017) produced specifically for the current exhibition: ‘Actions: The image of the world
can be different’. In gallery two, amongst the painterly, large-scale
digital C-print works by Melanie Manchot, this diminutive image by Walker demands
the viewer’s attention. Like an Edward Hopper voyeur, the spectator gazes upon
an intimate domestic scene from the bathroom doorway. The woman is deep in
contemplation and is unaware of the spectator’s gaze; the painting captures a
moment in time for both.
‘Joy’ is the
depiction of a female refugee whom Walker met and photographed
before making the studio painting. In collaboration with the charitable
organisation ‘Women for Refugee Women’,
Caroline Walker is challenging the injustices experienced by women seeking
asylum in the UK. The charity aims to “give a
voice to women who are all too often unheard and unseen” and “create a bridge
from the least powerful women in our society to the more powerful.”
Walker’s paintings have a
quiet tension discerned from a social and/or psychological perspective. How we
interpret these images inform us of our own perceptions and preconceptions.
Usually Walker’s paintings are large scale giving the illusion the spectator
could step into the interior and somehow implicate them in the scene. This small
oil sketch may be a precursor for a larger painting but its diminutive scale
does little to diminish the impact this image delivers. The intensity of the
red together with the soft, fluid painted marks makes a striking effect.
Walker’s regard for 19th century French painters Édouard Manet and
Edgar Degas reveals her painterly approach in observing contemporary women.
In the second part of
Kettle’s Yard Actions exhibition
programme, Walker’s new series of paintings of the five women refugees she met
living in London’s temporary accommodation will be on display in gallery two from
11 April until 6 May 2018.
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